Tag: Reviews

Summary: A girl whose best friend gets everything she wants is about to marry the guy she had a crush on. The girl ends up sleeping with the guy, now things are complicated. Should she make the guy dump her best friend? Who cares?

Thoughts: My wife had recently read the book by Emily Giffin, so she was very excited to see this. I was interested to see John Krasinski outside of “The Office”. Thankfully, John Krasinski is the only thing good about this movie. In fact in this review, if you see a “*”, go ahead and replace it with “except for John Krasinski, who is extraordinary.”

The plot is terrible. You don’t know who to root for*. The main character who is cheating with her best friend’s fiancée? The best friend who is kind of a not-nice-person? The fiancée, who refuses to make a choice? The random characters brought in for “comic relief”*? I couldn’t find myself wanting any of them to get a happily ever after*.

It seems like they took all of the original parts of the book and replaced them with RomCom cliches. Tearful breakup in the pouring rain while a crappy pop music plays as the main character has a flashback? Sure enough! Characters refusing to talk about things that could easily have solved their problems on day 1? In spades. John Krasinski, whose character is apparently hardly in the book, plays the part of the audience, sometimes literally saying what I was thinking. “You’re all so stupid!”, he yells at one point. “Make a decision!” His role was the only comedy in the Romantic Comedy. Thankfully, the movie shies away from physical humor (save for one scene), leaving most of the humor to come from Krasinki’s character making snarky comments about how dumb the whole thing is.

The main character is Hollywood Homely, ashamed to be hanging out with people she is much more attractive than. The fiancée looks EXACTLY like a young Tom Cruise; the scene with him wearing aviator sunglasses with his shirt open walking on the beach is pretty much the director admitting it.

Really, I can’t find much good to say*. It wasn’t completely awful like The Bounty Hunter, it just never gave you anyone to root for* because everyone was doing something dumb*.

I’m sure no one really cares what blogs I check on a daily basis, but each of them deserves to be read by more people. I’ll try to classify them for you:

Visual Effects Guys

Darth Mojo: Adam ‘Mojo’ Lebowitz. Visual Effects Supervisor for “Star Trek: Voyager”, “Babylon 5” and Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Director’s Edition. Visual Effects Designer for the new “Battlestar Galactica” and worked on Serenity. Shares some behind-the-scenes stuff, but its mostly his thoughts on other work (the new Star Trek most recently).

Drex Files: Doug Drexler. Former Make-Up Artist (won an Oscar for Dick Tracy). Visual Effects Supervisor for the new “Battlestar Galactica”. Artist/Production Designer for all things Trek since 1993. Usually shares CG ships he’s worked on.

Eavesdropping with Johnny: John Eaves. Concept Artist for all things Trek since 1993. Shares his concept drawings, sometimes corresponding with what Drexler has posted, or vice versa.

DarenDoc’s Slightly Nifty Musings: Darren Dochterman. Concept Artist for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, X-Men: The Last Stand, Get Smart, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Dragonball: Evolution, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and Iron Man 2. Visual Effects Supervisor for Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Director’s Edition. Also pitched the idea for “Star Trek: TOS: Remastered”, only better.

Actors

WilWheaton.net: Wil Wheaton. Played Wesley Crusher on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and Gordie Lachance in Stand By Me. Grew up to be a nostolgic writer, a voice-over actor, and a professional nerd.

RiffTrax Blog: Michael J Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett. The stars of the Sci-Fi Channel seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 who now do RiffTrax, downloadable MP3s of them making fun of movies you own on DVD.

Strange Reviews

Cake Wrecks: A blog showcasing “When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.” It’s sad what some people receive on their cakes…

X-Entertainment: A blog that needs to be updated, but when it is, it has hilarious reviews of toys and shows from our childhood.

Slacktivist: Left Behind: A weekly updated, ongoing review pointing out the terrible writing and theology that comes from the Left Behind series, both books and movies. It took him almost 5 years and 190 posts just to tear apart the first book. Fun reads, and really makes you think about what life would really be like after over half the planet disappeared. (Link goes to the Index)

Eleven Foot Pole: A daily review of each part of the premade 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons adventures that I’m running, with criticism and how to improve it for your players. Very helpful to me, at least.

Not A Blog, But You Should Read It

Not Always Right: Hilarious stories of stupid customers, submitted by Readers Like You.